Prediction

I'm about one hundred pages into Zadie Smith's new book, 'On Beauty'. I'm underwhelmed. Flashes of elegant writing are crowded out by a cast of cliched characters. An aloof Professor and his sassy African American wife. A saintly Christian family with a son who, provoked, reveals the machismo of their Trinidadian origins. My guess is that 350 pages down the line, his seemingly devout father will sleep with a college student (subtly illuminating the hypocrasy of pious religious folk). In consequence the two wives, both betrayed by their husbands, will strike up a friendship and explore the meaning of being a black woman in the lilly white world of academe. I am not unnerved. Part of the joy of reading for a bookclub meeting is the gleeful anticipation of being able to trash the book with wild abandon...